Duck Soup Gets Sweet Taste of 3D

Duck Soup has broken out of its traditional 2D shell into the world of 3D animation creating two live-action/CGI spots featuring the candy-coated M&Ms for BBDO and client Mars, Inc. Director Lane Nakamura and producer Sandra Oda, with their team, completed "Vending Machine" and "Movie Theater" in six weeks. "Vending Machine" features the red M&M nervously bracing himself inside a vending machine to keep from falling into the hands of a determined and very hungry young man. Since the red M&M is not shown until the last frame, Nakamura had to meet the challenge of making the scene work in a short amount of screentime by focusing on the character's facial expressions. In "Movie Theater" the yellow M&M hits and knocks over a loud, obnoxious moviegoer as he flies right into the seat next to the moviegoer's date. This spot was created both for theater release and television. Nakamura had to manipulate the live footage by rotoscoping, cutting and compositing various facial performances by the moviegoer's date and the second row of people to achieve optimal outcome and timing. Duck Soup used After Effects and Combustion for compositing, Maya for animation/modeling and LightWave for texture and rendering. Duck Soup, located in Los Angeles, offers a wide range of services, including character design, film title design, digital compositing, digital/traditional ink-and-paint and live-action integration.